Stereotyping, Deceiving, Diminishing: The ‘Model Minority’ Myth
- onceuponageneratio
- Jan 8, 2022
- 7 min read
Stereotyping, Deceiving, Diminishing: The ‘Model Minority’ Myth
by Shree
A ‘Colour-Blind’ Society? (Post 1, Slide 1)
“The model minority myth [MMM] hides the pressures and paradoxes inherent within an Asian American identity. If you don’t fit into the myth, it is hard to find your place at all.”
It isn't uncommon for Asian Americans (AAs) to face setbacks, and have microaggressions and racial stereotypes projected onto them because of the lack of knowledge and accountability by American history to accept the vastness and needs of AAs as a diverse group with many languages, cultural heritages, national origins, religions and much, much more. Asia, after all, is a continent.
Leaders, deriving the social successes of Asian Canadians and Asian Americans from their history of immigration to a model assimilated group within American society, have denied the deeply rooted fact of systemic racism that continues to disadvantage People of Colour (POC) in terms of security, education, job prospects, healthcare and more.
Its Origins in American Imperialism (Slides 2-4)
William Petersen’s 1966 New York Times article highlighted the discriminations that Japanese Americans overcame after the Second World War, particularly comparing their achievements with the perceived shortcomings of Black Americans whom, during the peak of the Civil Rights movement, were treated as ‘difficult’ minorities during America’s invasion of Vietnam, environmental concerns, and increasing protests against racial and gender inequality.
As a white sociologist, Petersen’s definition of the ‘model minority’ population not only became a standard of justification for America’s supposed lack of anti-Asian racism, but the perceived success of (what white Americans failed to realize as being one ethic group within the broad category of) Asian Americans went with attributing all Asian’s social climbing to their ‘polite, law-abiding’ character with innate talents and ‘pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps’ immigrant image.
By the 1970s, America had painted a picture of the stereotypical immigrant with the potential to realize the American Dream. Prevailing notions of Asians as hard-working, intelligent, independent and economically prosperous ‘Third World’ citizens - even when Asians were born in America - became the standard excuse by which white Americans began downplaying the prevalence of racism in other racial/ethic minority groups, especially Black Americans. Today, protesters of AAPI hate have condemned this violence with signs reading “Stop AAPI Hate”, “Asians are Humans” and “Not Your Model Minority”.
Whilst seemingly positive, the “false flattery” of the model minority myth presents a narrative of social idealism through suppressing the uglier truths of European colonisation of Asia Pacific that have to led anti-Asian (and other racial) hated, poverty, labour abuse and psychological subjugation that have resulted in, amongst a plethora of other things, the fetishisation of Asian women’s bodies and the stigmatisation of sex work.
It has made 5.7% of America’s population redundant by congratulating the existence of model citizens who’ve “made it”, model Asians who are “better” than the other minorities for overcoming their adversities, model aliens who are to be applauded whilst American society simultaneously leans on their image of superior virtue to “discount and marginalize” the issues faced by Asian Americans and other POC today.
Asian Americans: One and The Same? (Slides 5-6)
Anti-Asian American violence has exacerbated since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and there is no question why: there are Americans - not all, but enough to cause death and destruction - who are racist.
Frank H. Wu, author of ‘Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White’, said the MMM “allows the white-washing of very real problems. It allows people to say, ‘What are you complaining about? You're doing better here than you would in your homeland,’ of course not realizing that America is our homeland. It's a way to say that AAs don't need any help and shouldn't be shown any solicitude.”
A 2017 New York Magazine piece by Andrew Sullivan talked about the Asian American “solid two-parent family” trope. Ignorant of his generalisations about the diversity of AAs, his piece implied that AAs are monolithic despite there being disparities in the economic and social status of their vast ethnic groups: Bhutanese-Americans, for example, have far higher rates of poverty compared to Japanese-Americans.
Aside from promoting “racial resentment” by painting AAs as overachievers who attend prestigious institutions and win all the STEM competitions, Sullivan’s piece more dangerously suggests that the notions of Black failure and Asian success cannot be attributed to the inequalities and racism within American society. To him, they’re “one and the same… [allowing] a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict”.
The ‘Otherness’ of Asian Americans (Slides 7-10)
Viewed as “perpetual foreigners”, AAs have been erased through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Japanese people being forced into incarceration camps during WWII. Even today, they are constantly being ‘othered’. For example: the gross paradox of when a white American perceives how well AAs as a minority group have assimilated into their society, but still compliments an Asian’s English skills and asks ‘where are you really from?’
Brushing Asians with narratives that fit the “tick-the-box” perceptions of white Americans and their supremacy renders AAs invisible to broader society. Known as “stereotype promise”, this sometimes protects AAs from encountering other forms of systemic racism like police brutality, which abundantly targets Black Americans (more on this in the next post).
As a result, Asian Americans have been left out of “the American story”, and especially “the American racial story”, at large. History books do not show instances of Chinese American lynchings, the importation of enslaved Indians, the burning of mosques and gurdwaras, and Southeast Asians as the largest refugee group in U.S. history as they escape war or genocide.
But is the ‘American Dream’ really a saving grace for the U.S. when Asian immigrants, supposed ‘beneficiaries’ of an elevated social status amongst other POC, faced selective immigration policies after WWII that hid immense challenges that the ethnic groups and nationalities under the umbrella term ‘Asian Americans’ faced, and still face, today?
The pressure on all Asian students to “live up to” their ‘positive’ stereotypes have led to poor mental health and an unwillingness to ask for help; AA students have higher rates of attempting suicide than other racial groups. Assumptions of the academic genius of AAs made by teachers and peers means that their character growth may be overlooked and under-guided, and this myth follows into their careers: AA groups are underrepresented in leadership positions even when sub-populations “follow the rules'' and attain high levels of education.
Even though Asians are amongst the wealthiest people in the U.S., wealth inequality is the highest amongst Asian Americans. Stemming from and attributing to this is the prospect of education: 54% of AAs over 25 had a bachelors degree in 2016, higher than any racial group in the country. More than 70% of Indian Americans over 25 had a degree, but less than 20% of Asians from Cambodian, Hmong and Laotian descent had one.
Asian women workers with insecure migration status are more vulnerable to labour exploitation, abuses and police violence. Their realities, however, become silenced in the face of the white-washed celebrated myth of Asian success.
One ethnic group’s success story does not represent the whole of Asian America’s stories. Believing so not only disrespects the richness of cultures from Asia, but it becomes a way of fitting white America’s “pat-on-the-back” saviour narrative: a self-deceiving feat neglectful of the plethora of issues faced by many Asian Americans and other POC today.
Perpetuating Anti-Blackness and Other Racist Mentalities (Post 2)
The ‘model minority’ myth is harmful to the struggle for racial justice. Its line of argument goes something like this: “if Asian Americans can be successful in America, then Black people should be able to do the same.” The myth pits POC against one another through creating a hierarchy in which Asians are found at the top, creating a scapegoat that distracts us from working together to achieve justice for all.
Factually, the experiences of Asian Americans do not align with those of Black Americans, and comparing both racial groups as such to then lay the blame for America’s centuries of various social injustices like enslavement at the feet of Blacks in particular, as well as Indegenous people and other POC, is simply absurd. Even when Blacks demand more representation in something like employment, they can get labelled with damaging phrases such as being “difficult” or “challenging”, which only further suppresses them.
The myth suggests that only with hard work, strong family values and ‘getting over’ their history of oppression could a minority's social experiences become idealised according to white America’s standards. Creating a binary between ‘good’ minorities (Asian Americans) and the ‘bad’ ones (Black Americans, Latinx people, indegenious people etc.) not only drives a wedge between cross-racial solidarity, but ultimately undermines movements to address structural racism and propel racial equality.
Solutions to the Model Minority Myth
Following increased xenophobia and anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, in 2021 Illinois became the first state to require education about Asian American history in public school curriculums:
“K-12 American history texts reinforce the narrative that Asian immigrants and refugees are fortunate to have been ‘helped’ and ‘saved’ by the US,” Jean Wu, a Tufts Asian American history lecturer emerita, previously told Time. “The story does not begin with US imperialist wars that were waged to take Asian wealth and resources and the resulting violence, rupture and displacement in relation to Asian lives. Few realize that there is an Asian diaspora here in the US because the US went to Asia first.”
It’s time we all unlearn the biased beliefs about what it means to be Asian American, and do not limit our conscious education of AAs and other racial groups to their respective celebratory month(s).
Recommended Reading: Nguyen’s Article in the TIME’s
“Asian Americans Are Still Caught in the Trap of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype. And It Creates Inequality for All”.
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. (https://time.com/5859206/anti-asian-racism-america/)
Caption:
Perceptions, especially white-driven ones, surrounding the successes of Asian Americans (AAs) as the immigrant-background race that “made it” in the “Land of the Free” has been prevalent since the 1960s. With the rise in anti-Asian violence in the U.S. and other countries since the start of the pandemic, it has become more urgent than ever to emphasise just how damaging the stereotypes of all Asian-Americans fitting the same boxes, redundancies made to AA cultures and histories, and excuses used to deny systemic racism are for society at large.
One ethnic group’s success story does not represent the whole of Asian America’s stories. Believing so not only disrespects the richness of cultures from Asia, but it becomes a way of fitting white America’s “pat-on-the-back” saviour narrative: a self-deceiving feat neglectful of the plethora of issues faced by many AAs and other POC today.
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